Assassin's Creed

Pros:

-Nice graphics

-Good atmosphere; the Holy Land is accurately depicted and detailed

-Storyline is strong and engaging

Cons:

-Combat is way too easy

-Enemy AI is dumb

-Game play is far too repetitive and offers little variety in it's objectives

Assassin's Creed is a game that has a lot of potential, but holds it's self back by poor design choices. The game has a lot of good ideas; an engaging storyline based around a conspiracy theory, exploring the Holy Land during the Crusades, promises of freedom to play how you choose. But it often fails to achieve them properly because it's poor design choices over shadow it's potential.

You play as Desmond Miles, a former bar tender who has been kidnapped by a mysterious group with unknown motives. He is then placed into a strange machine called an "Animus" which can trace his DNA and relive his ancestors lives, who in this case is Altair, an Arabic assassin. The game begins with you chasing some men in a cave (after you work out the bugs with the Animus) and you get the feel of the game play, you can run and jump relatively with ease once you get used to the controls, and later on pulling off big jumps is quite fun and easy. You can climb just about anything you can see in this game, which gives the sense of freedom to choose how you want to play and travel around (notice how I said "sense"). You will also get a feel of the combat, which is far too easy and is more flash than substance. All it takes is standing there and just pressing the "square" button to counter every attack, which you will always kill your enemy with. Later in the game there a some enemies who won't die from counter attacks, but they are few and far between and even they don't provide much of a challenge.

The mission fails due to your ancestor's arrogance and he is stripped of his rank, in order to earn his place back the with Assassin's again he is given an ultimatum; He must take the life of nine men in exchange for his master choosing to spare his life. After this point you are given your first free roam aspects of the game, the Holy Land is well designed and accurately portrayed. The AI in the game also acts realistically, they move in crowds, carry things, they respond to your behaviors such as gently pushing your way through a crowd vs running straight through one, they will comment on your actions such as climbing buildings or jumping around like a mad men. Assassin's Creed does a great job at making you feel immersive in it's world. The environment it's self is well constructed and looks just like the Holy Land, it feels very immersive to ride your horse across the field while overlooking Jerusalem.

The world is dotted with small villages and soldiers from the Crusader Knights and Saladin that patrol them, who will attack you if they discover your identity. The world also has 3 major cities you will visit throughout the game, Jerusalem, Damascus, and Acre. Each of these cities is historically well constructed and even features famous religious sites such as The Wailing Wall and the Dome of the Rock, the latter of which you can also climb (don't try that in real life! ). Assassin's Creed is also a very nice looking game, not only thanks to it's nice graphics but it's art style as well. You can tell the developers really took the time to make this game feel alive. A shame the same cannot be said about it's game play and objectives. The missions in Assassin's creed are terribly repetitive, this is AC's biggest draw back; it is far too repetitive.

The missions lack variety and you will do the same thing constantly, it makes the game feel like work and not fun or engaging. And these missions are required to do in order to progress the game, you cannot skip them. The game play it's self is also repetitive, you just climb towers, beat up a peasant, pick pocket X item from this person, and repeat. There are a couple other game play types that I didn't listen, but you get the point, the game play is just too repetitive. There are some side type of missions like finding lost flags and hunting down Templars, but these only hold your interest for so long.

Final Verdict:

At the end of the day Assassin's Creed offers some great and interesting ideas, but it fails to execute them properly. It's game pay is far too repetitive for it's own good, and it's combat is far too easy and provides no challenge. The game is very overrated as far as major review out lets go, and it was not worth a full price. Thankfully the sequels are much improved.

Assassin's Creed get's a 2/5